Free Starship Eternal (War Eternal Book 1) by M.R. Forbes

too good, too sharp. Pictures and videos flooded the internet, detailed shots that clearly showed a structure that was organized and made of some kind of metal. More pictures showed it was charred and scarred, broken and burned, though how it got that way - if it happened on entry into the atmosphere or had been battered on its journey - was anybody's guess.
    An embarrassed government updated the lie. People were fired. Life went on. Antarctica was nobody's property, and it now contained something that everyone wanted.
    The United States was the first to arrive on the scene, only a day ahead of Japan, Russia, China, Iran, and the rest. They each wanted to claim the wreck as their own. They all wanted the secrets everyone on the planet knew that it held. The secret to traveling in space. The mysteries of how to build something so immense and send it to the stars. A demilitarized zone was formed around it, guns pointing in every direction, the actual crash site off-limits. To enter it was to die, and more than a few tried. Their bodies remained to be buried under fresh snow and ice. The bulk of the ship suffered the same fate.
    The news coverage had been running non-stop in Kathy's house since the day the ship came down. She was enamored with the mystery of its origins, and the potential that it held to carry her beyond the blue sky. She stayed up late watching interviews with soldiers who served at the site, with politicians who were part of the arguing over how to best claim it, or share it, or figure out some way to actually do something with the opportunity other than watch it get buried under the cold. She listened to the pundits, the celebrities. She went online and searched the back channels for conspiracies and clues. She even convinced her parents to buy her a t-shirt that read "I saw the crash" and had a blurry satellite photo of the site pressed onto it.
    Today was different, though. Today was the day she had been waiting for. A decision from the President, from Congress, from the most powerful nation in the world on how they would solve the quagmire and move civilization forward and into a new age.
    Her parents were on the couch beside her. Her father, tall and strong, an electrical engineer. Her mother, a chemistry professor at the nearby community college. They had instilled in their daughter the love of science, the desire to learn. Her younger brother was somewhere in the house, probably his room, disinterested in politics and tired of hearing about XENO-1.
    Kathy checked the time. 8:59. She kept her eyes glued to it until it switched over to 9:00. The commercials on the television paused midstream, and the United States seal appeared in their stead. A moment later, that too vanished, replaced with a camera view of a podium.  
    Their house was silent. The room at the White House was also quiet. Kathy could almost feel the tension through the thin layer of diodes. There had been an incident two days earlier. A bomb had gone off in the camp of the Alliance of Nations and killed almost a hundred soldiers.
    The President was an older woman, with gray hair and a taut face wearing a conservative blue suit. Her posture was confident and composed as she gained the podium.  
    "My fellow Americans," she said, her voice solid and strong. "These past months have done nothing, if not proven that there is life beyond this Earth, intelligent life that is not so unlike our own. Life that sought to learn, to grow, to reach for the stars and attain them. Life that ended tragically in the snow and ice of the Arctic." She paused, drawing in a deep breath. "We have made every attempt to honor the lives of these travelers who we do not know, and have not met. At the same time, we have worked tirelessly to honor the lives of our fellow humans here on Earth by coming to a peaceful and reasonable resolution to the question of ownership of the stricken craft. It has become abundantly clear in these months that there are those outside of